X1800/7800gt AA comparisons
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Chalnoth said:
Lol Chalnoth, I don't think you will win this one. Philosophy most certainly has a direct connection to reality. It is the study, reflection, and examination of perception of reality. It impacts our every day lives. Throughout history, philisophies of governing bodies have made the difference between democracy and totalitarian rule. A definition from Dictionary.com if we must: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=philosophy. Enjoy, sorry to go so off topic everyone else.
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Deathlike2
Regular
I should've clearly said "design philosophy".
Both companies have design philosophies/budgets and have both innovated in performance improvement techniques and IQ. Giving clear Kudos to one company while saying the other only does what it has to in regards to GPU evolution isnt true at all. Two sided stencil and FP16 free normalization were just 2 examples.
Deathlike2
Regular
ChrisRay
What I meant was certain examples Chalnoth had provided aren't really "innovations" to speak of. Things change for the better. I'm not trying to downplay NVidia's contributions and their innovations.. but both ATI and NVidia have made somewhat poor design decisions that ended up just being marketing instead of benefits that could be used for the future. Examples being NVidia's "programmable T&L" for the Geforce 3 and "Truform" for the Radeon 8500.
What I meant was certain examples Chalnoth had provided aren't really "innovations" to speak of. Things change for the better. I'm not trying to downplay NVidia's contributions and their innovations.. but both ATI and NVidia have made somewhat poor design decisions that ended up just being marketing instead of benefits that could be used for the future. Examples being NVidia's "programmable T&L" for the Geforce 3 and "Truform" for the Radeon 8500.
I beg to differ with both sides of the debate, because my numbers simply don't render in absolutes.
Neither 3dfx nor NVIDIA or any other IHV "invented" anti-aliasing; it's been there in imaging/cinematography for eons and it was merely a matter of time until it would had reached the mainstream PC space.
Within that relativity both major IHVs "innovate" while adding new functionalities/features and the task is here how to implement any given functionality more efficiently. To me it's a vast exaggeration to claim that NVIDIA only "innovates" and ATI doesn't or vice versa depending on standpoint. Both will do the best possible withing a given timeframe always according to the resources available.
It's too early to jump to any conclusions for me yet, but from the so far collected data and Eric's input in this very thread, ATI's new memory controller sounds highly flexible to me and might give some respectable advantages in the nearest future. Subject for further investigation and to that an interesting one.
I doubt it was due to S3TC back then, yet that's not the point either. There are always for all GPUs performance increases through the driver a couple of months after the release; I saw a sizeable difference in performance last year between the release driver and later drivers on the 6800, as I can see today between 7X.xx and 8X.xx class drivers on 7800 (which still need some serious polishing).
Neither 3dfx nor NVIDIA or any other IHV "invented" anti-aliasing; it's been there in imaging/cinematography for eons and it was merely a matter of time until it would had reached the mainstream PC space.
Within that relativity both major IHVs "innovate" while adding new functionalities/features and the task is here how to implement any given functionality more efficiently. To me it's a vast exaggeration to claim that NVIDIA only "innovates" and ATI doesn't or vice versa depending on standpoint. Both will do the best possible withing a given timeframe always according to the resources available.
It's too early to jump to any conclusions for me yet, but from the so far collected data and Eric's input in this very thread, ATI's new memory controller sounds highly flexible to me and might give some respectable advantages in the nearest future. Subject for further investigation and to that an interesting one.
I doubt it was due to S3TC back then, yet that's not the point either. There are always for all GPUs performance increases through the driver a couple of months after the release; I saw a sizeable difference in performance last year between the release driver and later drivers on the 6800, as I can see today between 7X.xx and 8X.xx class drivers on 7800 (which still need some serious polishing).
Oh and by the way terms and their meanings do not change that much when ported from one language into another; philosophy is a quite broad subject and if anything it doesn't refer to absolutes in the very least. Word for word it means nothing else than "friend of wisdom".
If you want to disconnect wisdom from reality be my guest, we're usually ruled by idiots anyway *cough*.
If you want to disconnect wisdom from reality be my guest, we're usually ruled by idiots anyway *cough*.
Deathlike2
Regular
Ailuros
Rethinking it, I'm probably incorrect at what was causing the boost during that era.. but the drivers were very good and a significant improvement during that time.
In any case, I do find a lot of marketed features that never seem to go anywhere... but for some of ATI's decisions, they are manifesting themselves more than some of NVidia's (I plead some ignorance into some of NVidia's benefits, but not that they don't exist.. it's that I haven't heard/read too much about it.)
Rethinking it, I'm probably incorrect at what was causing the boost during that era.. but the drivers were very good and a significant improvement during that time.
In any case, I do find a lot of marketed features that never seem to go anywhere... but for some of ATI's decisions, they are manifesting themselves more than some of NVidia's (I plead some ignorance into some of NVidia's benefits, but not that they don't exist.. it's that I haven't heard/read too much about it.)
This post from Dave is interesting... 
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=591589&postcount=17
I expected that ATI had been working on optimizing the R520 drivers for a long time since the chip was delayed.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=591589&postcount=17
I expected that ATI had been working on optimizing the R520 drivers for a long time since the chip was delayed.
sireric said:
Well, it's a valid concern, but not one you don't encounter when designing any API, which is why APIs evolve over time. Almost by definition, APIs usually present a restricted interface to an underlying resource, that limits the way it can be manipulated. This applies not just to device drivers/graphics APIs, but also to TCP/IP Sockets database, and many other successful APIs.
I think it's must easier to handle the case of revising APIs over time, and the case of legacy software tied to a "to the metal" API which imposes severe constraints on GPU IHVs. Since GPU production is much more expensive than software, I'd rather a proliferation of API versions, than GPUs locked into a low level API which ties their hands because software depends on it.
I fear the requirement that GPUs have to run physics, and therefore, we must modify APIs to make them "closer to the metal" so that any conceivable calculation can be implemented. I'd rather keep the GPU paradigm to rendering and stream based calculations and leave it at that. If it turns out that Physics doesn't run well under DX9/DX10, well, then so be it. I care about the use case that rendering runs well.
Here's some Doom 3 results for the new patch on an X1800 XL running our "Turkey Baster" test in Ultra quality:
Code:
X1800 XL 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
4x 130.7 109.7 83.7 58.3 42.5
4x (Patch) 135.0 119.2 92.6 67.0 49.9
% Increase 3.3% 8.7% 10.6% 14.9% 17.4%
On this test on the XL it appears to make no different in 6x FSAA and a slightly detrimental performance in 2x.
I didn't see it. I see the benchmarks now, and it is an improvement on ATI's side. But since the card still has a rather large memory bandwidth advantage over the 7800 GTX, it still isn't that impressive, and it's still behind the lead that the XT typically has in Direct3D games.neliz said:
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